(Los Angeles) The author of a killing in an LGBTQ bar in the western United States was sentenced Tuesday by federal courts to a new life sentence, mainly justified by his homophobic motivations.
Armed with a pistol and an assault rifle, Anderson Lee Aldrich opened fire on November 19, 2022 in “Club Q” in Colorado Springs, killing five and injuring 18, just after a drag queen show .
He had been disarmed by two patrons of the nightclub.
“This sentence, although severe, cannot undo the harm inflicted that day. […] When the shooting stopped, Club Q looked like a war zone,” recalled Kristen Clarke, one of the Justice Department deputies, to the press. “We will not tolerate hatred in our country.”
Colorado criminal justice had already sentenced Aldrich, 24, to life in prison following proceedings mainly brought for murder and attempted murder.
The shooter, who claims to be non-binary, has often denied being motivated by hate.
But he ultimately agreed to plead guilty to the federal charges against him, which centered on his homophobic beliefs. A decision which allows him to avoid a trial where he would have risked the death penalty.
The defendant “committed these crimes because of real or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity,” federal prosecutors insisted in recent court documents.
Aldrich made anti-gay slurs during the summer before the massacre, according to a neighbor and his ex-landlord. Several people who met him to play online video games also testified to his animosity towards the LGBT community, according to the FBI investigation.
Two months before the killings, he coordinated an online attack against a former homosexual superior after he had been fired. The victim “received an avalanche of emails containing insults and anti-homosexual comments,” according to the prosecution.
And two weeks before his action, he shared a manifesto online that considers transgender people to be suffering from a “mental illness”.
His defense had argued that Aldrich had acted under the influence of cocaine and various drugs.
The federal prosecutor insisted on the premeditated nature of his act. Aldrich spent $9,000 on weapons purchases in the two years before the massacre and visited Club Q several times to get to know the location.
Investigators found a map of the nightclub at his home, where the entrance and exit had been cordoned off.
The bloodbath had revived fears among the American LGBT community, six years after the worst massacre in its history: on June 12, 2016, an American of Afghan origin killed 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
